‘WSF had a prophetic voice’

Walden Bello has attended every World Social Forum. He is a senior
analyst at Focus on Global South, president of the Freedom from Debt
Coalition and a professor at the University of the Philippines.As the
WSF was winding down in Belem in Brazil, Al Jazeera's Gabriel Elizondo
spoke with Bello about his thoughts on this year's meeting.
Al Jazeera: How has the 2009 World Social Forum different from the past years'?

Bello: This represents the triumph of the World Social Forum over the World Economic Forum.

Basically I think that what the forum has been standing for is the
strong critique of neo-liberalism and warning the world of the kinds of
difficulties neo-liberalism was bringing to the world.

And I think that now this economic crisis has really shown that we
had a prophetic voice. A consistent voice of critique that was being
put forward.

And what has happened now is in fact the sum of our fear, but at the
same time I think that the WSF held out a hope; a hope that there could
be a different world from the kind of neo-liberal capitalism world that
Davos represented.

And I think that people are now looking to the World Social Forum
more than ever for the kinds of alternatives that we need, to be able
to restructure the world now that neo-liberalism has failed, now that
capitalism is in severe crisis, now that the whole system has lost its
legitimacy.

This voice that thousands here have represented now is a voice that
is going to be heard all around the world as articulating the
possibility of a different world.

How do you respond to people who say the World Social Forum does not provide any solutions?

I think there are a number of very strong themes that have emerged over the last few years.

One is that there must be strong controls and regulations over the market. We have consistently held that belief.

Two, that globalisation was creating a very fragile world and that
we needed to be able to make more independent economies, to make
internal markets the drivers of development, rather then the global
market. Also that we needed controls on transnational corporations.

Bello says people are now looking to the WSF more than ever before [EPA]

We have always held that democracy was very central. That economic
democracy, that participatory democracy, enterprises, at the level of
economic decision making, people should be able to intervene and make
decision on what kind of industries should be developed.

Democracy, equity, the globalisation, regulation: these are all the
ideas that we have stood for. We have always said we did not stand for
any one model.

This uni-model line of thinking was one of the problems and we have
basically said that the way that the principles of an economy would be
put together would be different in different countries.

And so I think that the people who said we have nothing to offer have not listened to what we have been saying all along.

Is this the year the World Social Forum could be seen as an equal partner in the exchange of ideas to the World Economic Forum?

I think we have been in a struggle with Davos for the last 9 years.
And I think this represents a triumph of the World Social Forum over
Davos. And I think these are two very different kinds of forums.

Here is where ordinary people, citizens, people that are marginalised come. This is a search for alternatives from below.

And Davos has represented the failure of the kind of the
neo-liberal, technocratic, market driven, corporate driven, politics
from above.

So I think that Davos is exhausted, it is dead, and the World Social
Forum and related forums represent the areas where we should really be
looking for alternatives at this point in time.

And I think any peoples in government and other sectors are going to
look at the kinds of things being discussed at the WSF, because the
formulas from Davos no longer work.